does anyone of you believe in defragmentation programs?

[db90h]

(Virtually) no matter what u do to ur hard drive, it will live long beyond its usefulness. So, I'd so no. But heat generation ,as the article mentions, is a concern along these lines, since it could push your system over the threshold and crash, in theory.

If you don't care about perfromance degradation, then don't defragment. You don't have to care about making your system faster, just not letting it get slower.

Now let's all get together and be teacups.

[mouser]

i must admit to having kfitting's fears regarding defragging as well.. but i don't know anything about whether its well founded, it's just a gut level reluctance to having the hard drive going insane moving stuff around like mad more than it has to.  my general approach has been to use a defragmenter occasionally, maybe once every coupld of months.  but that's based just on superstition not on any informed information.

[f0dder]

Drive thrashing... well, sane defrag apps will try reading/writing at longish intervals before moving, and then there's the OS'es "elevator sort" algorithm + Native Command Queuing on SATA/SCSI drives to eliminate thrashing a bit.

If you don't defragment, you'll get daily thrashing, instead of "just" a (somewhat massive, yes) amount of thrashing while the defrag is done.

As for heat generation issues, you should always have a 80 or 120mm fan in front of your harddrives. In normal system use, it means a temperature difference of ~20C around here (Denmark... Scandinavia... aka cold).

[brotherS]

but i don't know anything about whether its well founded, it's just a gut level reluctance to having the hard drive going insane moving stuff around like mad more than it has to.

-mouser (February 05, 2006, 10:49 PM)

I'm defragging HDs at least once a week (I like the file structure to be clean and access to be fast) and NEVER had a single problem because of that.

[nowshining]

I use Defrag.exe the cmd line version...it also comes with windefrag.exe a gui like version...http://www.kessels.com/defrag/
I also use the built in defragmentor, and also speedefrag i found off www.download.com that one u just start up, choose drives to defrag, and press start, it auto reboots ur compuer, once u sign on, or autosign on if u have ur computer set to do that, and defrags and then shuts down ur computer..

Each has its little quirks..

[f0dder]

Oooh, the www.kessels.com site has source for the command-line defragmenter, cute

[donnell]

I use Diskeeper to defragment my drives. Its got IFAAST and Invisitasking which completely automate the task. Stuff like burning CDs and running multiple applications at the same time is super smooth when the drives are defragged and in good shape. Best part is none of these are hit even with the tool running in the background ( set it and forget it option)

[steeladept]

As for heat generation issues, you should always have a 80 or 120mm fan in front of your harddrives. In normal system use, it means a temperature difference of ~20C around here (Denmark... Scandinavia... aka cold).

-f0dder (February 06, 2006, 10:17 AM)

Yes, it makes a good room heater in the winter too, especially when combined with the GPU fan on high intensity games (though it ups the AC bill if you have that sort of thing).

[bugis]

I personally do believe in defragging regularly...there are a  lot of skeptics out there when it comes to payware defrag programs, but I have gone with what I know does the job for me. I do quite a bit of gaming (COD2, Oblivion, NFS:MW and UT2K4 mostly) and a lot of *ahem* bittorrenting so the state of my drive is not always perfect. I tried a few of the commercial defraggers, and finally settled on Diskeeper 2k7. Seems to be the most unselfish defragger when it comes to eating up my precious system resources. Runs smoothly in the background without stuttering (has been a problem with me with some other defraggers) and one big advantage is its multiple drive defrag capability. Doesnt take too long to defrag my twin 160 GB T7k250s compared to the built in windows utility that would take all of eternity to finish the job .

[bugis]

But, speed aside, what about harddisk thrashing?  It just doesn't seem like it's a good thing to make the harddrive heads slam around all the time.  Speed is a secondary concern to me... I care about the life of my harddrive!  Is this a valid reason to defragment?

Kevin

-kfitting (February 05, 2006, 03:27 PM)

EDIT: After re-reading my post, I dont think I made much sense even to myself , so let me edit my post and add this, before I am misunderstood: some people claim that regular defragmentation can actually *reduce* the life of your HDD because of heavy read-write activity. I personally think this is utter rubbish, and the opposite is actually true.

And if your HDD fails because of defragging, then it was faulty to begin with....HDDs these days should be able to do some reasnoably heavy duty stuff and keep going without blinking. I believe they are engineered with this in mind.

I have never heard about any HDD failure due to defragging. But keep in mind that other factors also come into play such as the temperature, dust, humidity etc. I have a 80mm fan in the front panel of my Centurion 5 case blowing air over the HDDs, keeping them reasonably cool but not as cool as I'd like. Ideally a 120 mm fan would be nice, but it wont fit in the casing in front.

I dont see any cons of defragging....

[urlwolf]

Does anyone know how to defragment an USB drive?
It doesn't show up in perfectDisk...

[Darwin]

It should do, urlwolf. It's an option though - go to Configuration - Advanced Configuration and select the "Removable Storage" tab...

does anyone of you believe in defragmentation programs?

EDIT: added screenshot - I'm a SnagIT fiend today (with apologies to mouser)!

[Carol Haynes]

Note that not all USB drives are compatible - which is why it is disabled by default! Though how you are supposed to know ....

FWIW My Seagate external drive seems OK with it.

[Darwin]

Yes - I'd meant to underline the blurb above the radio button about checking with the manufacturer for compatability and see that I didn't... Right, off to do that now!